Harriet A. Harris’ Fundamentalism and Evangelicals, reprinted paperback edition, is all about what the book title conveys, with a bit more thrown in for those who want to explore beyond its obvious Christian and Western confines. Demonstrating a sharp conceptual eye and an impressive historical consciousness, this book is mostly about situating the forceful currents of fundamentalism within the vast sea of evangelicals. Through meticulous and wide-ranging research, imaginative and resourceful analysis and tidy and adroit argumentation, the author makes a case for the strong primary connections and often overlooked secondary divergences between these two weighty Western expressions of twentieth-century Christianity. Although Harris may be read to be working from an organic model, wherein fundamentalism may be viewed to be the raging and overflowing tributary of the evangelical ‘mainstream’, it is equally possible to interpret her work along a familial model, whereby hot-blooded but hard-headed fundamentalism sets in motion a process to negotiate a working relationship with their warm-hearted but strong-minded evangelical cousins. The depth of this monograph comes from Harris’ ability to blend together dominant philosophical and theological commitments which stirred and steered evangelicals over the last three centuries with the dynamic social and historical challenges which led to the emergence and growth of Christian fundamentalism in the twentieth century. The breadth of this work comes from the well conceived and well executed dialogue that is set up between influential theologians and Bible scholars in Europe and North America. European philosophy and theology is thus brought back to cross-fertilise a largely self-referential and self-contained North American discourse on Christian fundamentalism so as to offer novel possibilities for evangelicals worldwide.

The Bible is the hub around which much of the discussion of this book revolves since it conjoins fundamentalism and evangelicals in an ambivalent and intriguing alliance. This religious product seems to unify a common project: fundamentalism and evangelicals source the Bible, the divine Word to human beings, for the overall objective of being solely faithful to God and fully fruitful in the world. A complex of significant themes emerges through this engaging discussion. The Bible's authority over the legitimisations of the world, its ability to reveal absolute truth in the face of competing relative certitudes, its reliability to overcome clever modes of human interpretations which obscure divine communication, and its foundational revelatory nature in tandem with the fundamental revelation of Jesus as the Christ, are those which stand out. The discussion is both thick and rich; and thankfully it is not circular. Readers are likely to find themselves gradually drawn towards many inviting trajectories which promise to break from the calcified boundaries of Christian fundamentalism. The minutiae of theological modifications and hermeneutical mutations, resulting from the impingement of Common Sense Realism, neo-Calvinism and modern hermeneutical philosophy, are strategically placed to lure evangelicals towards exploring creative expressions into the twenty-first century.

A prior commitment to investigate and interpret fundamentalism and evangelicals as text-centred phenomena may have made this project manageable. Yet it leaves out far too much for those who interpret such movements integrally and globally. To start with, the decision to introduce fundamentalism as a ‘historical movement’ and ‘mentality’ ignores the political, economic and psychological dimensions of most global twentieth-century movements. One is left wondering whether there is any connection between the emphasis on Christian truth emerging from authority of the Bible, which bound fundamentalism with evangelicals, and the striving for human freedom arising from critical thinking against all forms of imposed authority, which galvanised the anti-colonial, anti-racist and anti-sexist movements through the same twentieth century. Furthermore, confining fundamentalism and evangelicals to textuality ignored the variety of media which are responsible for spreading and sustaining these movements globally. The successful utilisation of radio and television to shape Christian identities in non-Western contexts and the extensive strategies employed by differently educated illiterate to formulate oral interpretations cannot be jettisoned in accounting for fundamentalists and evangelicals globally.

Fortunately, the bookends are pregnant with future possibilities. Thus, at the one end, through the preface (written for the ‘Paperback Edition’ in 2007), Harris clearly points to the extra-textual future of evangelicals as entwined with the influential rise of charismatic, narrative and sacramental movements in the world. At the other end, through the appendix (‘Comparative Fundamentalism’), Harris gives us a concise synopsis of fundamentalism in other religious traditions. Interestingly, the political activism of religious fundamentalism, conspicuously missing from her discussion of Christian fundamentalism, is brought back in the end as a key opening.